Getting real
All you need to know about buying and tending a natural Christmas tree
Dura Smith of the Country Lane Garden Club of Chelmsford has 10 Christmas trees in her home, all artificial. She starts putting them up at the beginning of November and finishes taking them down in March. Smith used to have a single fresh, cut tree, "But once I moved to the artificial ones, there were no limits. I found I could have as many Christmas trees as I wanted for as long as I wanted."
Smith's Chelmsford friend Christine Bjorklund is staying within the mortal limits of a single live tree.
"Normally, we put it up a week before Christmas, and take it down after Epiphany on January 6," she said. "We never manage to take it down before it's lost a lot of needles." She puts up with vacuuming because, "the smell of a balsam tree is very important to me."
The battle between real and artificial Christmas trees is rejoined each December, and each year the real trees seem to lose more ground. Seven out of 10 Christmas trees displayed in the United States last year were artificial, according to the National Christmas Tree Association in St. Louis. Still, many people insist that only a real tree smells like Christmas.
"It's a chance to bring nature indoors," said John Forti, a curator at the Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, N.H., which has its Candlelight Stroll this Saturday and Sunday. The event features Christmas trees from different eras, including one made entirely from wire and goose feathers in a style from the 1930s. Artificial Christmas trees are nothing new.
Forti himself, however, is devoted to live trees. "My parents tried an artificial tree once when I was young, but I begged and pleaded so it lasted a very short time," he said. Like Bjorklund, he is compelled by the smell. "Scent is our strongest memory trigger, so it helps me remember my childhood Christmases."
It's no coincidence that balsam fir is both the most strongly scented and the most regionally popular Christmas tree here, but there are many other species. The fraser fir is Mark Cutler's favorite. He's operations manager at the Mahoney's Garden Center in Cambridge.
"I like the blue-gray undertone to the needles, the tree's shape, which flares wider at the base like a pyramid, and the scaffolding, which is open without being spindly, so you have a lot of depth for hanging lights and ornaments," he said. "It has a piney scent, plus it's long lasting.
Fraser and noble firs were top rated for needle retention in tests at state universities in North Carolina and Washington. Balsam fir, Canaan fir, Colorado blue spruce, and white pine also were rated good/excellent for "keepability," while eastern red cedar, Scotch pine, white spruce, and Norway spruce got the lowest longevity ratings.
Grand firs got a good/excellent rating and have a strong orange-peel citrus scent with an undertone of cloves. Lightly scented Colorado blue spruces are painful to handle, but many people find it worth wearing gloves to trim such beautiful blue needles. Noble fir and concolor fir also have a bluish tinge and are less prickly to decorate. They also have a clean outdoors scent. Douglas fir has a strong lemony pine smell but is not as long lasting. White spruce has a nice shape, but it's prickly and can lose its needles early. Black hill spruce is a white spruce variety "painted blue or deeper green," according to Cutler, and treated for better needle retention. The scent of white spruce, however, which reminds some people of cat urine, is not a plus. White pine smells nice and looks pretty with its long, lanquid needles, but the stems are too willowy to hold anything but garlands and sugarplums.
While most artificial trees are manufactured in China and shipped halfway around the world, live Christmas tree plantations help maintain open space and small farms, especially when you patronize a local tree farm. You also get the freshest tree this way.
Julie Gauld, secretary of the Massachusetts Christmas Tree Association, runs the 14-acre Evergreen Christmastree Farm at 155 Kendall Hill Road, Sterling, with her husband, Bill, the group's president.
"We had 150 members last year," she said. "We have 110 now. After the holidays, we'll have to find out if they missed paying their dues or have gone out of business. Some may have just stopped. Not everyone wants to work that hard."
Together, the Gaulds average 45 hours a week year-round caring for their tree farm. Most of their customers are young families with children who cut their own trees and enjoy hot cocoa and cookies in the warming shed.
"We don't just sell the trees," Gauld said. "We sell the experience."
Mahoney's seven garden centers sell 20,000 Christmas trees each year. Balsam firs are their freshest trees, said Peter Mahoney, general manager of the Winchester center. He was at Mahoney's balsam tree plantation in Nova Scotia three weeks ago for the harvest.
"Ideally," he said, "I think a tree should have 10 frosts before it's cut so it has gone dormant, so we wait until the middle of November."
Test for loose needles and tip-pruning. "I take my hand and run it against the grain on a branch, and if anything falls off that's not a tree I want," said Francine Crawford, copresident of the Garden Club of the Back Bay who considers herself a "connoisseur of trees." (Her club members net $10,000 each year from their handmade Christmas wreaths to finance the planting and pruning of Back Bay street trees.) When she buys a Christmas tree, "I make them lift the tree up and pound it down to loosen those scrunched-up branches so I can see if it really does have a great shape. Some growers have been tip pruning trees to give them that perfect cone shape. By tip pruning I mean they cut off all the wayward branches maybe six months before the holidays and new growth comes up and you get little new branches that are too weak to hold your heavy ornaments. I look at the tips and if I see new, lighter green, weak, bendable branches there, I don't buy it."
Keep the tree stand full of water. Trees can drink as much as a gallon a day, so your stand should hold at least that much and be checked daily. If you have a small, old-fashioned tree stand, it may be time to replace it with one of the many superior new designs that hold more water, adjust easily, and resist tipping over. As long as your tree is drawing water, it is not a fire hazard. If the water level drops below the bottom of the trunk, it will seal up again and you must take down your tree.
Before setting up, rinse the tree stand with water containing a tablespoon of household bleach to reduce the growth of bacteria. Don't put bleach or preservatives in the standing water, however, especially if you have pets. They frequently drink from tree stands (another reason to keep checking the water level).
Don't purchase a living Christmas tree to plant outdoors unless you have already dug a planting hole, since the ground is now frozen.
After the holidays, there are several options for your tree. Call your town for specifics or type in your zip code at the NCTA's website, realchristmastrees.org, and follow "holiday recycling" to treecycling locations; alternatively, call 800-253-2687. Most communities have designated Christmas tree pick-up days, but you can also cut the boughs for winter mulch on the garden, place the whole tree near a bird feeder to provide cover for the birds, or turn it into an additional bird feeder by stringing it with popcorn, bread cubes, or slices of apple dipped in peanut butter. One caveat: Don't burn the tree in the fireplace, because the pitch content in the bark can clog chimneys.
The annual Candlelight Stroll in Portsmouth, N.H., sponsored by the Strawbery Banke Museum, is this Saturday and Sunday, 4-9 p.m. Call 603-433-1100 or visit strawberybanke.org. To find a tree farm near you, call the Massachusetts Christmas Tree Association at 978-365-5818, or visit Christmas-Trees.org.For information on wreaths made by members of the Garden Club of the Back Bay, call 617-859-8865.
